Pain and ecstasy from a thousand needles

THERE IS this climactic scene in Hero, that spectacular epic of a movie, where, at the Emperor’s signal, thousands of arrows darkened the sky and rained down on Jet Li. His body was reduced to a human pin cushion, executed as an assassin but acclaimed and buried as a hero because he sacrificed his desire to kill the Emperor for revenge for the greater good and glory of China.

The sight of all those arrows reminds me of my first brush with acupuncture. The sight of all those needles being stuck on a patient’s body can be pretty scary, specially for those WHO grew up in mortal fear of the syringe.

Many of us grew up with a mysterious view of China, fed with Western accounts of Chinese torture chambers and other imaginative tales of punishment and horror. Acupuncture seems like one of those insidious Chinese methods to control our minds, if not our bodies. Western medicine has not prepared us to accept this kind of therapy which, while tolerated in American hospitals, has not passed the rigorous tests required by the US Food and Drug Administration.

It didn’t help that one of my friends warned me that acupuncture is more torture than treatment. But that didn’t scare me. Besides, I am what may be described as an incurable hypochondriac WHO has just about exhausted the options available in Western medicine for conditions I want attended to. I’m pretty avant-garde and ready to try things like, well… acupuncture.

Acupuncture is a painless procedure, more of a tickling sensation or even an arousing experience. It is putting fine, thin, wire-like implements on the surface of sensitive parts of the body to balance what the Chinese refer to as qi (pronounced as "chee"), the life force energy. This practice is over 4,000 years old and is based on a simple theory that when the flow of qi is blocked or out-of-balance, poor health results.

The sensitive points on the body correspond to areas that are known to be rich in nerve endings. Studies show that stimulating these points cause multiple biologic responses, triggering a flow of chemicals in the muscles, spinal cord and brain that releases the body’s natural pain-killing endorphins, which can also affect circulation and other bodily systems. Note that endorphins not only regulate pain and hunger but are also involved in the release of sex hormones from the pituitary gland, in other words, the main cause of orgasm.

A typical acupuncture session lasts almost an hour depending on the diagnosis. I am being treated by Dr. Xing Gui Fang to improve my reproductive capacity. He is one of SynergyMed’s five Chinese doctors from Beijing University’s College of Chinese Traditional Medicine. Dr. Xing’s specialty is acupuncture for treatment of headaches, dizziness, stroke, migraine, facial paralysis, hip pain, leg pain, ischiadicus or sitting bone nerve pain, insomnia, stomach ache, abdominal pain, dysmenorrhea, menstrual irregularity, neck problems, chronic and allergic sinusitis, shoulder inflammation and its surrounding parts. His background is quite impressive and he has written several books on acupuncture.

For my specific problem, Dr. Xing puts a maximum of 15 fine, wire-like disposable implements all over my body–literally from head to toe. This is the best part since I get the best ever 30-minute sleep in my life!

After that, he comes back to do "cupping" applying heated glasses of various sizes on my back by means of a vacuum. The procedure is supposed to eliminate wind and cold from the muscles, which relieves pain and promotes circulation.

Traditional Chinese treatment is now acknowledged worldwide as a comple-mentary approach to health care. In fact, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends it for more than 40 conditions as diverse as asthma and chronic pain. According to a 2002 WHO report, "A national expert panel of the United States National Institutes of Health concluded in 1998 that there is clear evidence that needle acupuncture treatment is more effective and has fewer side-effects for certain symptoms than conventional treatments."

For those not quite ready to entrust their health entirely to such alternative methods, a place like SynergyMed Center at the Discovery Suites in Ortigas center where I go offers both Western medical practices (complete with blood work-ups and other conventional diagnostic treatments) as well as traditional Chinese treatments (aside from acupuncture, acu-pressure and herbal medicine are also offered).

The surroundings at the SynergyMed Center are decidedly modern though, with sleek furnishings and a contemporary look and feel to the 23rd floor clinic, certainly nothing remotely like a torture chamber!

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SynergyMed may be reached at tel. no. 631-2611.